Tag Archives: southwest

Alaska and Southwest on Test

The return to airworthiness of the 737 Max was first given in the US so there was a focus on getting airlines deliveries if they were under FAA jurisdiction.  I guess we didn’t realize at that point that there would be some follow on issues that resulted in these jets getting grounded but such is the life of the Max watcher.  Southwest started taking jets very soon after it was possible and Alaska soon followed with their first delivery – the grounding having come into effect before they had a chance to take their first jet.

On one day when I was watching the activity at Boeing Field, both airlines had aircraft out on test.  They were operating under Boeing flight numbers but it wasn’t possible to tell whether they were production flight tests for Boeing or customer acceptance flights.  No doubt I shall see a lot more of both operators with these jets in due course – once Boeing sorts out the latest issues and they become a more reliable part of service!

Landing a Southwest 737 in a Crosswind

This Southwest 737-700 was completing a test flight at Paine Field.  The crosswind was pretty strong so the pilot used the wing down approach to handling the crosswind.  They touched down on the starboard gear and bounced a bit before settling those wheels on the surface.  A short while later, they rolled wings level and the port gear made contact.  Aside from the bounce, a pretty good example of landing in a crosswind in a big jet.

Stored 737s

After two month of shelter at home, I did finally venture out in the car to see something other than the house or my bike routes.  I swung by Paine Field to see some of the stored Southwest 737s that are there.  Planes seem to have been arriving and then heading out again so I don’t know what the overall plan is.  They also seem to have moved from where they were when they first came in.  I got to see a few of them scattered around near FHCAM.

These jets look like they are in place for a while.  The nacelle inlet which is normally unpainted metal is currently covered in some black coating which runs on to the inlet blanking.  The exhaust ducts are similarly blocked up.  The jets are arrayed around the ramp and, while behind the fencing, the use of a monopod with a ball head and the remote shooting app from Canon allowed me to see what the shots looked like and to take the pictures.  I went with a few panos since things are rather close to the fence in some places.

I hope these jets are back up and working before too long.

Southwest Max 7s Awaiting Release

The 737 Max 8 has been the best seller of the Max product line.  The Max 7 has barely sold at all and Boeing even had to redesign it to be a shrink of the Max 8 rather than the rework of the -700 that it was originally intended to be.  Southwest and WestJet have bought them but they are about the only ones.  I guess production examples have started to come off the line during the grounding.  When you go around the back of Renton, amongst the stored Southwest jets are a bunch of the Max 7s.  I guess certification and delivery of these will be something intended to follow on closely from the return to service of the Max 8 and Max 9 jets.

Down By the Lake at Love Field

Bachman Lake sits at one end of Dallas Love Field.  Early one morning, I decided to see whether the trail alongside the lake made for a good spot to get some shots.  The traffic at Love Field is heavily skewed towards Southwest 737s so I wasn’t expecting a lot of variety but instead wanted to see what angles I could get.  It also would be nice to have a stroll along the lake in the morning light.

There are two runways at Love Field so you have a bit of a guess as to which one will be used at any one time but that is fine.  The view across the lake as the jets come to the northerly runway provides a nice wider view of things.  The near runway allows getting together front quarter shots or to go right underneath for a different perspective.  While most arrivals were Southwest jets, I did see a couple of corporate jets while I was there so there was a bit of variety.

Max 8 Departs Just Before Grounding

Paul and I were in Vegas for Red Flag but the early morning is also a good time to shoot at McCarran International.  The morning light is ideal for the north/south runways and, with the wind playing ball, you can get the iconic McCarran shots of jets taking off with the weird and wonderful hotel buildings behind them.  Where else will you get a pyramid and the Empire State Building in the background.  Southwest has a big presence at McCarran and we saw a string of their jets head out including one Max8.  We watched it climb out little realizing that the grounding order would be coming within hours or even minutes.  Whether the jet continued to its destination or turned around, we don’t know but that was its last commercial flight for a while.

Lightroom 8.2 Detail Enhancer

Updates to Lightroom come along relatively regularly and they tend to include new features along with fixes and performance tweaks.  The latest update, Lightroom 8.2, includes a new addition called Detail Enhancer.  This is a feature that is designed to provide some better small-scale detail as part of the raw conversion process.  It creates a new DNG file based on a more complex calculation of the demosaicing of the sensor data.

I saw some videos about it and figured it wasn’t going to be of much use for the type of thing I am working on.  However, it did trigger one possible area of interest.  The algorithms are supposed to be designed to make better calculations around the different color pixels that sensors have.  Sensors are set up in a Bayer Pattern where different color sensitive sensors occupy different pixel spaces.  They each record in one color and then software interpolates between them to create colors for each pixel irrespective of which color was originally recorded at that location.

In a post from a while back, I mused on the way in which the colors of the Southwest Livery and the registration clashed and seemed to provide a distorted image even when everything around them was sharp.  I was pondering whether this was artifacting caused by the different colors and the way the sensor was recording the data.  If this was the case, maybe this new functionality would change the way things were rendered.  I dug out a few of the shots that had previously demonstrated this effect and ran the process on them.  These shots show the wide shot, the original rendering of the close up and the revised rendering using Detail Enhancer.

As you can see from the comparisons, Detail Enhancer does not suddenly render a perfect registration for the aircraft.  However, to my eye at least, it does appear as if the results are noticeably better then they were with the original rendering.  For completeness, the original rendering is done with the latest process version of Adobe’s raw converter to make things as fair as possible.  It does appear to make a difference.  This makes me think my theory about whiny things looked wrong might have some merit, even if this update has not fully resolved things.

Exodus of Southwest Jets

The failure of an engine on a Southwest 737 that sadly resulted in the death of a passenger caused a major review of the fleet of 737s.  Inspections were identified for the engines in the affected range and everyone was scrambling to find facilities in which to carry out the checks.  ATS at Paine Field is one of Southwest’s suppliers and they took in a number of the jets.  Towards the end of the fly day that Paine Field was having, three Southwest jets emerged from ATS’s facility.  They were towed to the north end of the field.

Here they were started up and they took it in turns to taxi down to where we were and then depart.  One of the jets was an 800 series and may not have bee affected by the inspection but could have been at ATS for other work.  The 700s were quite possibly part of the inspection process.  After a day of light traffic and warbirds, the appearance of three Southwest 737s and their subsequent departures made for a change of pace.

Max Development and Production Jets

Boeing has completed flight testing of the first version of the 737 Max family, the Max 8.  The Max 9 is currently in flight test and I posted shots of one of those aircraft here.  While some additional flight testing will be carried out on the Max 8, the test fleet is now done.  In due course, these aircraft will be refurbished and sold on to customers.  In the meantime, new production jets are being built for delivery – except when it comes to Southwest.

As a result of a crewing issue, Southwest is delaying taking its jets until they have removed the 737-300 fleet from service.  Consequently, Boeing is building them but not delivering them.  There are a number parked up in the parking lot at Boeing Field and some are still sitting at Renton.  Engines aren’t fitted since this is one way to keep the cost down pending delivery.  They will be fitted and flown nearer the delivery date.

The flight line of these dormant Max 8s sits alongside the municipal part of the airport.  I created a panorama of the jets which you can zoom and pan around below.

Southwest Scimitars and the Inaccuracy of Online Truths

Online forums can be a great source of information.  They can also be full of rubbish.  With the introduction of the split scimitar tips on the 737 fleets, Southwest was an early adopter on their 800 series jets.  However, I read that they had not been happy with performance and had stopped adopting them.  They definitely weren’t going to have them on the 700 series.  Above is a 700 series with split scimitars.  A number of airframes have now been fitted including this one so I guess those people were not the most accurate source of info!